An analysis of treatment integrity of response interruption and redirection
RIRD still beats vocal stereotypy when staff hit only half the steps, so push past the occasional error and keep teaching.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Colón et al. (2019) asked a practical question: how sloppy can RIRD get and still work? They worked with three autistic children who vocalized repetitively. Staff used response interruption and redirection exactly as written, then on purpose dropped steps so fidelity hit 50% or 25%.
The team ran sessions in the usual therapy room. They measured vocal stereotypy minute-by-minute to see if the fix still held when staff missed half the steps.
What they found
RIRD cut the repetitive sounds for every child, even when staff followed only half the steps. Gains stuck around when every fourth session was run at 25% fidelity. Full fidelity still gave the cleanest drop, but the difference was small enough that no one would notice without a graph.
How this fits with other research
Cassella et al. (2011) showed RIRD works, yet warned the skill does not travel; kids kept the same repetitive sounds in new rooms or with new teachers. Colón adds the comfort that you will not lose the benefit from an occasional missed prompt.
Toper‐Korkmaz et al. (2018) proved you can shorten RIRD to one demand and still win. Colón now shows you can also stay relaxed about perfect form; both tweaks save staff time without hurting outcomes.
Abuin et al. (2026) tested 50% fidelity with a different intervention (DRA) and saw the low-fidelity version beat the perfect one. That odd result lines up with Colón: sometimes good-enough really is good enough.
Why it matters
Stop restarting the whole procedure after one flubbed trial. If your RIRD drops to 50% fidelity, keep going; the behavior is still likely to fall. Use the saved effort to program generalization across rooms and people, the step Duffy showed is still critical.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Response interruption and redirection has been shown to effectively decrease stereotypy, but its application outside an experimental setting has not been well studied. In Experiment 1, decreases in automatically maintained vocal stereotypy were obtained following treatment in a controlled setting for 3 participants diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. Descriptive data on the consistency and accuracy of response interruption and redirection were then collected in the classroom setting. Results showed that the consistency of treatment implementation varied across participants and staff members. Failure to implement the treatment was the most common error. However, when response interruption and redirection was implemented, the components were generally carried out as prescribed. In Experiment 2, we conducted a parametric analysis in a controlled setting to test the impact of consistency errors on response interruption and redirection. The results indicated that response interruption and redirection was generally effective at 50% treatment implementation or higher. Furthermore, we observed treatment effects when 25% implementation sessions were interspersed with 100% treatment implementation sessions. Application of response interruption and redirection in light of previous studies and clinical implications are discussed.
Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 2019 · doi:10.1002/jaba.537